Creating Favorable Local Context for Entrepreneurship: The Importance of Sustainable Urban Development in Florianópolis, SC, Brazil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well written manuscript, however, the Literature may be coincided with the conclusions which needs to be clearly explained by explaining the contributions as well.  

The authors aimed to investigate the, “Creating favorable local context for entrepreneurship: the importance of sustainable urban development in Florianópolis, SC, Brazil”

Overall, the manuscript is well written in all sections of the manuscript, followed by sound methods with results from wide study settings.

The study is meaningful in the current situation and context. However, I would like to provide the following comments and suggestions.

• Keywords are usually written alphabetically.

• In the Abstract, the authors should include the findings of the study with study population and limitations as well.

• In the introduction part, I would like to suggest authors add some related literature from a few other countries as well instead of only providing evidence from Brazil. What has already been innovated, discussed; what is new discovery of this paper? Also, I suggest a few more sentences on how this paper will add to the literature gap? How is this paper be beneficial in terms of sustainable development in any urban area/s?

• Results are expected to be a bit clearer to the reader. Could authors re-write the results section of the paper.

• In the discussion section, authors should highlight the strengths of the study while limitations should be extended more precisely noting down biases associated with.

 

Author Response

We would like to thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript.
We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions provided, which have allowed us to improve the previous version of the manuscript.
We have put your comments and our response next. All the changes that have been made to the new version of the paper are marked up using the “Track Changes” function of MS Word, as required.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

I have read with interest the article entitled “Creating favorable local context for entrepreneurship: the importance of sustainable urban development in Florianópolis, SC, Brazil”.

 

The aim of the paper is to show the relations between sustainable urban development and entrepreneurial ecosystem, where the former is interpreted as a catalyst for urban conditions which favor the latter.

I think it is a potentially interesting manuscript, especially thanks to its conceptual model (p. 18), but it shows a number of theoretical and methodological limits which must be taken in consideration. In my opinion, it needs to be strengthened before being published, mostly from a methodological point of view, with special concern to the data source.

 

These are the main critical points:

-      International (critical) literature on sustainable urban development could be integrated;

-      A deeper analysis of the case study and of data obtained from content analysis is needed.

 

 

In detail:

 

First, from a theoretical perspective, in my opinion, the complete absence of any reference to critical literature and to its contribution to the academic debate on sustainable urbanism represents an important limit.

In line with it, there is an a-critical assumption of many key concepts, such as sustainability, urban sustainable development, urban innovation, entrepreneurship, among others, which are, instead, pluralistic categories, complex social categories, and disputed dispositive, made of up a variety of actors, discourses and practices.

For example, international literature has developed in-depth critics on sustainable urban development and its relations with entrepreneurship. While there is vast potential in sustainability, sustainable urbanism is often a facade to cover business-as-usual urban development.

 

A bit summary of such literature, together with a more detailed analysis of practices and policies of sustainable urban development implemented in Florianópolis, could enrich the analysis.

Second, the case study makes use of a number of other studies, institutional reports and a limited number of interviews with local stakeholders. In my opinion, this section appears to be rather weak. For instance, it doesn’t reflect the simple fact that there are a number of different ways of framing and interpreting urban facts. International scientific literature on the subject has revealed that the self-representations of stakeholders often use these concepts (sustainability, innovation, smartness) as slogans, and in my opinion one of our main tasks, as scholars, is to unveil what happens beyond appearances of rhetoric. Methodologies such as content and discourse analysis aim to specifically serve this need, by offering more critical, richer and complex interpretations of representations.

 

 

Suggestions:

 

In my opinion, this paper should explore more deeply and critically the phenomenon of entrepreneurial urban ecosystems in Florianopolis, and its relations with environmentalism and sustainability. However, I am aware that the manuscript can’t be changed radically, but given that the role of entrepreneurs has become regarded as central to urban sustainability, in my opinion, a more thorough investigation into how entrepreneurship becomes linked to sustainable urban development is needed.

With this in mind, authors should also draw deeply on place-specific literature on Florianopolis’s urban entrepreneurialism, even by drawing on critical studies. For example, it could be of great interest to analyze more in-depth how governance strategies have led to constructing the urban environment (or milieu) as an entrepreneurial ecosystem that leverages sustainability to attract talent and support entrepreneurs, and/or if and how urban entrepreneurialism in Florianópolis has increasingly been environmentalized, by means of sustainable, green and/or smart city initiatives and projects.

 

Other minor observations:

 

The following phrases are repeated in an identical manner in the introduction (p. 2) and in discussion (p. 16) and I suggest to change, at least partially, them appropriately:

“Cities are the great centers of economic development, where knowledge, talent, and diversity are concentrated, where human potential is revealed, and proposals for improving the quality of life allied to sustainable development arise, not only for today’s society but also for future generations (LEITE and AWAD, 2012)”.

“According to Rezende et al. (2017), for a municipality to be considered sustainable, it must avoid the degradation of its environmental system, reduce social inequalities, and provide its inhabitants with a healthy and safe environment, as well as articulate public policies and citizenship actions that allow it to face the present challenges and future ones, being, therefore…”

 

The phrase “The entrepreneurial ecosystem of Florianópolis, which was analyzed by Isenberg (2011), is presented in Figure 14” (p. 14) gives the impression that the work of Isenberg discusses the ecosystem of Florianópolis, but I don’t think it is the object of his analysis.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript.
We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions provided, which have allowed us to improve the previous version of the manuscript.
We have put your comments and our response next. All the changes that have been made to the new version of the paper are marked up using the “Track Changes” function of MS Word, as required.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I found the research topic interesting. I read the paper with interest.

 Recommendations:

In point 3. MATERIALS & METHODS

The research methodology is insufficiently explained. I understand that this paper is based on 6 interviews, document analysis, and testimonials.

What were the criteria in choosing the interviewees?

What was the structure of the interview?

What documents were analyzed?

Whose testimonials were analyzed? What number? How relevant are they? On what criteria were they chosen?

 

I think an explanatory paragraph is needed.

 

In point 4.3 PRESENT URBAN CONDITIONS CAPABLE OF PROMOTING THE FORMATION OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM

 It is presented in Figure 3 - Urban management practices for sustainable urban development, urban conditions, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

 In the explanatory paragraph there is no reference, for example, to the financial facilities that an entrepreneur has, we noticed that companies can register 100% digitally. What is, on average, the number of days a company is established? What are the conditions regarding labor taxes? What are the facilities offered by the municipality for investors?

Thank You!

Author Response

We would like to thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript.
We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions provided, which have allowed us to improve the previous version of the manuscript.
We have put your comments and our response next. All the changes that have been made to the new version of the paper are marked up using the “Track Changes” function of MS Word, as required.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read with interest also this second version of the manuscript, which at least in part has responded to criticism of the first version, both from theoretical and methodological perspectives.

For this reason, in my opinion, the article can be accepted in the present form.